Parachutist plummets: Emergency chute saves man from certain death

A PARACHUTIST had a lucky escape yesterday when his main parachute failed to open, forcing him to rely on his emergency ’chute to land safely.

It is believed the parachutist is a policeman from the SAPS task force who was training at Oribi Airport yesterday morning.

Callers to The Witness repor­ted seeing a parachute drop from the sky and feared that a parachutist had plummeted to his death.

A reader said he was driving along when he saw people stopped at the side of the road, looking up at the sky.

“I looked up and saw the parachutist spinning in a spiral as he was coming down. I realised he wouldn’t recover, so I stopped to see if I could help.”

He said the man seemed fine after he had landed and was talking to people around him.

“He said he was okay and that it was his last day of training.”

The parachutist landed in a yard in Washington Road.

Vernon Kloppers, chief instructor at Skydive Centre, Pietermaritzburg, told The Witness that the man cut away his main parachute when it failed to open. “But he deployed his reserve parachute and landed safely. He did everything properly …” He said the discarded parachute landed in Oribi Village.

Join the conversation!

24.com encourages commentary submitted via MyNews24. Contributions of 200 words or more will be considered for publication.

We reserve editorial discretion to decide what will be published. Read our comments policy for guidelines on contributions.

24.com publishes all comments posted on articles provided that they adhere to our Comments Policy. Should you wish to report a comment for editorial review, please do so by clicking the 'Report Comment' button to the right of each comment.

Tell us a bit about yourself:

Saving your profile

Settings

News24 allows you to edit the display of certain components based on a location.
If you wish to personalise the page based on your preferences, please select a
location for each component and click "Submit" in order for the changes to
take affect.

Your Location*

Weather*

Always remember my setting

Saving your settings

Facebook Sign-In

Hi News addict,

Join the News24 Community to be involved in breaking the news.

Log in with Facebook to comment and personalise news, weather and listings.